


begin again

by heydilly



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Beginnings, Gen, KageHina Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heydilly/pseuds/heydilly
Summary: Hinata wonders how many times he has to change before stumbling into another dead end. Kageyama wonders how many times he can change before losing himself.————Two boys meet on opposite sides of the court; both learn how to start over.





	begin again

**Author's Note:**

> my work for kagehina day & kagehina week over on tumblr! 9/10 <33

Sometimes, Hinata wonders how many times he can begin again without stumbling into another dead end.

His epic adventure-ish story starts in a gymnasium, as all great chronicles do (surely, Odysseus was born from a gymnasium with a volleyball in one hand). He has his comrades behind him—Izumi, Kouji, a few randomly-selected first-years—and he’s ready to march into battle now. The hardest battles, Hinata thinks, are fought on shiny gymnasium floors and volleyball courts. Whoever drops the ball first loses the game, loses _everything,_ forced into starting over.

It can’t be Hinata who loses, though. He hopes—no, he _knows_ —with every fiber of his being that his team will win.

And then Kageyama Tobio appears.

 

The first time Hinata meets Kageyama, his impression of him is not the best, to say the very least.

Kageyama is cold. Brutal, merciless, a swift rush of chilling air that silences the people who walk behind him. His eyes are blue and black and grey, swirling together like a storm. He scans Hinata like that, looking him up and down with a dangerous glint in his eye in front of the boys’ bathroom.

It’s unsettling, for sure, and it sends shivers down Hinata’s spine, but strangely enough, it calms him. He’s still nervous beyond relief, but his knees aren’t shaking anymore and his stomach doesn’t feel like it’s going to turn inside out.

 _This is who I’m fighting,_ Hinata thinks, and he feels some odd rush of adrenaline that probably isn’t normal and definitely isn’t appropriate at this moment in time. _He’s strong._

Kageyama’s eyes flash again, that cold shade of blue. “What are you doing here? Making memories?”

“Making memories?” Hinata repeats, tilting his head. “No. I came here to win!”

“You talk as though winning is nothing,” Kageyama remarks in distaste.

“The first match, the second, the finals,” Hinata declares, his hands balled into fists at his side, “we’ll win ‘em all!”

“The first match, the second, play-offs, nationals,” Kageyama scowls, turning around as though he can’t stand to look at Hinata’s face anymore. _“I’ll_ win them all.”

He walks away, the ends of his jacket fluttering as his back disappears into the crowd. Like a king’s cape.

 

 _That_ is Hinata’s first impression of Kageyama Tobio—a terrifying, tyrannical king.

 

* * *

 

The second time Hinata must begin again is in the Karasuno gymnasium. It hurts to lose, an aching in his heart and a whirlwind in his stomach and cold waterfalls in his eyes.

But it hurts even more to give up, and Hinata is _never_ going to do that.

He steps through the front doors, the ceiling lights hitting him as soon as it opens, and it's like he’s in some sort of new world that he’s never seen before. A proper gymnasium is what it is, but maybe it’s more than that. Hinata doesn’t have to practice with the girls’ team anymore (not that he minded, really, the foxy senpai helped), he doesn’t have to pass to a silent wall in the hallways, doesn’t have to spend hours spiking well into the night, all alone.

But then a familiar figure comes into focus, his feet just barely leaving the floor, body poised in perfect form for a jump serve.

Kageyama Tobio. _The King._

Their eyes meet, and Kageyama’s ball doesn’t quite reach its destination. Instead, it hits him on the head and bounces off onto the gym floor.

Right then and there, every single memory of Kageyama that Hinata’s ever had flashes through his head, and it's not exactly the most pleasant train of thought. The same person who told Hinata he would lose without a doubt, the same person who yelled at their teammates, the same person who thought Hinata had wasted the last _three years_ of his life…

That person stands right in front of him.

They stare at each other for a moment; Kageyama’s expression changes from some mix of shock and confusion to annoyance and subtly-boiling anger.

Hinata’s legs start shaking again. _Screw you, legs!_ he curses, though that may be a little too harsh (his legs are one of his few redeeming qualities, after all).

It's not that Hinata’s afraid—and even if he _is_ a little bit scared, it wouldn't be his fault, any greater man would be trembling at the sight of Kageyama—but perhaps more of, _oh my god I thought the next time I saw this guy, I could totally beat him and now I can’t because we go to the same school and the universe is really against me right now!_

It truly is tragic, and not the first time the universe has rallied against him and cheered on his enemies, but Hinata Shouyou is made of tougher stuff than that.

And, also, very determined to prove that he’s made of tougher stuff than Kageyama Tobio.

 

* * *

 

He’s lost again. It hurts as much as the first time, but maybe even more now that everyone else has lost with him, too.

And _Kageyama._

They’re all going ahead and improving. Asahi and Yamaguchi with their serves, Nishinoya with his setting, Tsukishima with his blocks. The only one who isn’t really going anywhere is Hinata.

Did they lose against Aoba Johsai because of him? Is it his fault it was blocked? His fault the score went from 29 to 31?

It keeps him up at night sometimes, when he tosses a ball at the ceiling over and over, like repeating it will erase his loss and turn it into victory.

The ball drops into his hands, and he curls his fingers around it. He still can’t palm it, and his hands aren’t even that small, it _should_ be possible, Kageyama can do it—

Hinata takes a sharp breath at the thought of him, shaking his head. There isn’t a thing that Kageyama _can’t_ do.

And yet there are a million things that Hinata cannot do. The list probably stretches from his head to his toes; maybe further, if all his flaws were written bigger.

His only choice is to get better, but how? How can he change?

 _Oh._ Hinata smiles a little sadly into the darkness of his room, because there’s only one way to improve. Kageyama won’t like it, the team probably won’t like it, but the road to victory has never been an easy one.  


* * *

 

A week later, Hinata loses not a friend, but a partner. Perhaps, he realizes, the road to victory can only be walked alone.

He tells himself this on his bike ride home, even when the tears come and it’s obvious that the same path can be taken by more than one person, and it’s just that Kageyama didn’t want to walk next to him.

Maybe he never did.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Kageyama wonders how many times he can change himself before he starts to lose himself.

 

He is here to win. With his team, by himself, it doesn’t matter. As long as victory greets him at the door, anything will do.

And then Hinata Shouyou appears.

He is far too short for a volleyball player—a libero, maybe, but he’s wearing the captain’s uniform and surely he can’t be the _leader_ of his team—and his hair is a painful shade of bright orange.

“I’m here to win!” he declares, and Kageyama takes an instinctive step back. He doesn’t like the look in the boy’s face; it promises something dangerous, like the calm before the storm.

 

* * *

 

 

“Faster!” Kageyama yells, pointing a finger at Kunimi’s chest. “You can still save some of those balls!”

“It’s annoying,” Kunimi says flatly, and he rolls his eyes when he turns around.

“Jump higher!” Kageyama snarls. His remarks are directed at Kindaichi this time. “You’re tall, why don’t you use your height better?”

“Not everyone’s like you, _King,”_ Kindaichi shoots back, and Kunimi pats his shoulder when they get back into the rotation. No one has ever patted Kageyama’s shoulder before, and watching it happen to someone else leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Winning is bittersweet, after all, but he soon discovers that loss tastes a million times worse.

He makes a toss. It’s a good one, leaves his fingertips quietly and still arcs high into the air. He makes a toss.

And no one is there to hit it.

The crowd is silent, the other team is silent, the whole gym feels eerily quiet, but there’s a panicked buzzing in Kageyama’s ears. It gets louder and louder and louder, drowning everything else out until all he can hear is the buzzing and the sound of his heart beating faster, _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum,_ threatening to break out of his chest. The sweat on his forehead feels sicker and colder now and a lump forms in the back of his throat. He tries to swallow it, but it remains as twisted as ever.

“You’re out, Kageyama,” the coach calls out. “Calm down for once, will you?”

Kageyama can barely hear a word he says. The only words that register are _you’re out. You’re out, you’re out, you’re out._ Somehow, he finds the willpower to take the sign from the reserve setter’s hands. He stares at it on the bench, sharply grabbing a towel from the offerings of a skimpy second-year and placing it over his head so it hides his vision.

 

 

Kitagawa Daiichi loses that game. It’s the last middle school game that Kageyama ever plays, until he has to start all over again.

 

* * *

   

He spends a lot of time staring at his hands after that, and after Karasuno has accepted him. Not putting on hand cream, or filing his nails. Just staring.

Kageyama knows something is wrong with him. He doesn’t know how to high-five his teammates, has never felt a group hug before, and all the compliments he thinks of get stuck in his throat before they can ever come out.

He’s working on it. Slowly, yes, but still, working.

Of course, he finds a way to tear all his progress down.

 

* * *

 

Kageyama walks to the bus stop alone the night of the fight. Occasionally, Hinata would walk with him there, mostly just to annoy him and take the leftovers of his meat buns. He would talk the whole way and only pause to take a breath before resuming his vivid discussion about the best deodorant, and then Kageyama would remark that Hinata probably didn’t wear any deodorant, he still smelled terrible, and they would bicker until Kageyama’s bus arrived and they were forced to exchange reluctant goodbyes.

Hinata is, perhaps, the most fightable person Kageyama has ever met. Wait, no, that’s not quite it. Tsukishima is just as irritating, maybe even moreso, and Kageyama has meant plenty of people who have irked him over the years. Maybe Hinata is the only person that Kageyama has felt comfortable _actually_ fighting. The only one who takes his punches and his jabs and spits them right back.

 _Not anymore,_ Kageyama thinks bitterly. It feels like, eventually, the ones who tolerate him always start to snap somehow.

 

* * *

 

Who is Kageyama Tobio? He asks himself this as he fills his water bottle up after the practice match against Datekou. He is a setter, sixteen years old, a first-year at Karasuno, born on December 22nd.

_A king. A goody-two-shoes._

Kageyama shakes his head, brushing away the thoughts that cloud the back of his mind. He still doesn’t know what Miya Atsumu means. A goody-two-shoes? It can’t be bad, but maybe it is, maybe Kageyama’s lost a part of him.

“Oi, Kageyama,” Hinata’s voice echoes as he turns around the corner. “Um...you know you’re spilling water all over the floor.”

Kageyama looks down to see that his bottle is positioned several inches away from the fountain faucet, water overflowing onto the ground.

“I-I knew that!” he snaps, hurriedly grabbing a wad of napkins from the side of the water fountain.

“Oh-kayy,” Hinata grins, unconvinced. He tilts his head to the side. “Were you thinking or something?”

“What do you mean?”

Hinata shrugs. “I don’t know. Are you still hung up on the whole _king_ thing?”

_You have the true nature of a king! Just accept that!_

Kageyama looks away. “No. Of course not. Dumbass.”

“You totally were,” Hinata decides. He smiles and pats Kageyama's shoulder. It feels weird, but also strangely comforting. Hinata's touch lingers even after his hand is gone. “Being a king isn’t bad. Being a goody-two-shoes or whatever isn’t bad either.”

“How would you know?” Kageyama asks. “No one’s ever called you either of those.”

“Right, right, I’m just a peasant! Don’t mind me, I should be scrubbing the floors and bowing at your feet-”

“Shut up!” Kageyama turns red. “Not what I meant.”

Hinata laughs, bright and cheery. “I know, just pulling your leg!” His face grows more serious. “You know, you’ve changed a lot.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“In a good way! It’s like, you went from a tyrant to an actual ruler,” Hinata adds. “That’s pretty cool, right?”

“...I guess?”

“It is! Being able to be, like, a better person and stuff,” Hinata says. “That’s cool! You’re cool! Well, you’re still a jerk, but-”

“Okay, I get it,” Kageyama rolls his eyes. “Um. Thanks.”

“Woah,” a familiar voice comes from behind them, and Tsukishima turns around the corner. “You know, you can confess your undying love somewhere else, some people actually need to drink water.”

“SHUT UP!” Kageyama and Hinata yell simultaneously, both resembling ripe tomatoes.

“Oh, I forgot, you two must be _very_ thirsty, huh?”

“Hold my water bottle,” Kageyama demands, handing it to Hinata as he marches in Tsukishima’s direction.

“Yeah, punch him, Kageyama! Fight, fight-”

“YOU THREE GET OVER HERE, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING NETS DOWN!”

“Ow, Daichi, my eardrums…”

“Oh, sorry, Suga.”

“This is all your fault,” Hinata complains, making his way towards a net with Kageyama.

“You’re the one who went over here in the first place.”

“Yeah, cause you almost flooded the whole gym!”

“There’s barely even a puddle there, dumbass-”

“Whatever, you water-waster!”

Kageyama rolls his eyes, drowning out the sound of Hinata’s voice until it’s a pleasant hum in his ears.

Maybe, just maybe, this will be the last time he has to start over.

Then again, not all beginnings are the start of something terrible. Kageyama is at least grateful he can begin again with Karasuno, with Hinata.

**Author's Note:**

> my [ tumblr](http://kageyawn.tumblr.com) (kageyawn)
> 
> thanks for reading!!


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